


Foolish Magistrate vs. COPPA

by StupidStory



Category: Sagwa - Fandom
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-26
Updated: 2020-02-26
Packaged: 2021-02-27 23:53:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,433
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22904293
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/StupidStory/pseuds/StupidStory
Summary: The stone-age internet has expanded and more parchment-tech has evolved from that, including Smartphones and Nintendo Switches. Also, the Magistrate hosts a family reunion and Ba-Do finds herself in a rabbit hole of sorts. Then YouTube's COPPA update makes things more difficult for them.





	Foolish Magistrate vs. COPPA

Disclaimer: If you haven't read 'The Foolish Magistrate Censors the Internet” yet, this story will confuse you real quick. Or maybe it will anyway regardless, but it would make only slightly more sense if you've read that first. In short, it's a convoluted, messy system involving paper, calligraphy cats, and messenger bats and mind-reading ghosts to make this rudimentary internet work. Alright, let's do it to it.

The Magistrate and his family were hosting their first ever family reunion cuz seeing one another only on (their version of) Facebook and video calls just wasn't the same. Video calls were just the cats drawing every single frame of the particular view of whatever is on the other end on a small sheet of papyrus (being relayed by a bat flying at faster than mach speed), getting the angle exactly correct and everything. Same goes for whoever is on the other end of the call. Every time the person they're calling would say something, the cat would meow what they said, trying to impersonate them as best they can (which was actually pretty good, so more than simply 'trying') and in the exact particular way they said it. Since the stone-age tech was growing more and more complex, their payment of fish had to be much more lavish. So lavish in fact that it could cure someone's meth addiction.

“Alright, time for a family photo,” the Magistrate declared. His smartphone (really just a small rectangle of papyrus that a cat would constantly draw on to emulate the functions of an actual phone, as many as 60 times a second) was held out in front of him. They were drawing so fast they'd sometimes get friction burns on their tails. One of the cats drew the entire scene before him, updating as many times as needed. Everyone smiled, and the Magistrate tapped the small circle in the bottom center to snap the picture. He then shared it to his peeps on Facebook.

Every time someone got onto a webpage, one of the cats would quickly and discreetly write some info on a tiny piece of paper (about the size of a fortune cookie fortune) and then a bat would make a fortune cookie and slip the “fortune” inside it (the “fortune” is whatever data actual browsing cookies collect) and send it to wherever the website hosts happen to be. This will become important a little later.

Ba-Do, Person 1, and Person 2 felt slightly awkward at this family reunion. They were friends with some of their great aunts and uncles on Facebook, and even tho they were really friendly, down to earth, and affectionate in person, they would often share stuff on FB that's far on the other side of the political coin that she was on and shocked that they would share such things. And they were here today. The 3 beautiful daughters were debating on whether to engage them on such subjects or keep their traps shut and have a good time. Some people were playing corn-hole. Someone was playing Super Mario Odyssey on the Switch in docked mode. There was also a dog that someone was playing with. There were also a bunch of relatives were seated at the dinner table, some of them being the very same ones I mentioned earlier that made Ba-Do, Person 1, and Person 2 feel slightly awkward.

“Hey Ba-Do, I just sent you a link. I think it's urgent. Please look at it whenever you have time,” one of the relatives urged. Ba-Do felt a little wary, hoping it wasn't some kind of political thing but she tried to keep an open mind.

After she finished eating, Ba-Do pointed to the link and Dongwa started drawing each individual frame on the papyrus about 30 times a second while meowing an exact recreation of the video's audio. The video was titled “BOYCOTT THE RAIN.”

“Josh Feuerstein here. The LGBT agenda just will not stop, and this latest attempt to shove the LGBT lifestyle down our throats is in the form of the rainbows you see in the sky outside right after a rainstorm. That's right, the sky itself is trying to turn your kids gay. Parents, DO NOT LET YOUR KIDS OUTSIDE DURING THIS TIME. Kids don't need to see LGBT propaganda plastered against the sky, so please keep them indoors if there is a rainbow outside. PLEASE SHARE THIS VIDEO! We need to do a rain boycott! Have a beautiful day and God bless.” Ba-Do swiped her finger across the small papyrus and the cats drew every single frame of the scrolling depending on how far and how fast she moved her finger. Bats hurriedly whispered comments in the cats' ears about what comments people posted. The majority of the comments agreed with him and said that the rain has gone too far, and the few people that called him out on his ridiculousness got eaten alive by the people who unironically sided with him.

She “clicked” another video, not because she liked the channel but because of a little thing called bile fascination.

“Josh Feuerstein here, and I am pissed about those scientists who claim gravity is a law. No, it is a theory! Those motherfuckers have the gall to assert that it isn't Jesus holding everything to Earth. If gravity was a thing, then all the penguins would fall off of Antarctica. The Earth is flat. There is absolutely no scientific evidence indicating that the Earth is round. God made the world flat so no one would fall off of Antarctica. It amuses me when liberals talk about how dumb I am when they somehow believe that the earth is round. LOL. This agenda that the Earth is round is all part of an agenda meant to bring about a One World Government. Make 1984 fiction again! If you see any fallacies with what I just said, or anything I ever said in all my past, present, and future videos, then you are going to hell. Only an atheist could ever not see eye to eye with me and I'm not interested in arguing with you because I don't argue with fools. Share the heck out of this video or you're heartless. Have a beautiful day and God bless.”

What kind of rabbit hole had she gotten herself into? Could she even climb back out of it, or would climbing back out cause the same kind of strains as when you ascend in Made in Abyss?

And then she found herself on one talking about how kid-friendly his videos are.

“I want kids to watch my videos too. The more the merrier. What's that, my videos aren't kid-friendly because I talk about politics and guns and hardly the Bible at all despite being a pastor? Well I dunno what you're smoking cuz the Bible has stuff like giant nails literally being pounded into a guy's hands and feet, people on fire, wars, the mindfuck known as the book of Revelation, and the words hell, damn, whore, and ass, and yet kids still read it and you're telling me guns are not kid-friendly? You sir are a wackjob who probably uses his parents credit card to pay for everything in life.”

She typed “Your logic is so full of holes it could trigger someone with trypophobia” in the comments section of each video. She then got a reply saying something like “your stupid and you look like Jabba the Hut. I win this argument because going after you're appearance is like playing Exodia in Yu-Gi-Oh!”

In one of the other rooms a boy was playing his Switch on the makeshift TV in docked mode. He was playing Super Mario Odyssey. The Switch controller was a couple small bamboo sticks attached to a rock, and each one had drawings of buttons marked on them corresponding to the buttons on an actual joycon. The cats who were drawing the images of the game about 60 times a second would pay perfect attention to which “button” was “pressed” or which direction either of the analog sticks was tilted, and make Mario (or the camera) act accordingly. He was on Culmina Crater. The cat was also meowing a near-perfect imitation of every single piece of music, sound effect, and voice grunt in the whole game.

“Hey, we gotta watch some dumb football game that keeps getting interrupted by commercials, so if you would continue that in handheld mode that'd be great.”

The boy removed the bamboo sticks from the rock and placed them on the sides of the small sheet of papyrus. The cat jumped down from the “TV” and seamlessly resumed all the drawings onto the small papyrus sheet from where he had left off. He was now playing in handheld mode, while another cat made it up to the TV to put on the football game, courtesy of bats reporting everything.

“Dammit, I keep dying!” The guy playing Super Mario Odyssey said when Mario said “OW HOTHOTHOTHOT!” for the umpteenth time. “I just need to git gud. Well, git guder, actually.”

Several more hours later he decided to quit and take a break. He decided to play Super Mario Maker 2. Whenever anyone submits a level, a cat would write down the level code (they'd have some way of keeping tabs on which level codes they can still use) and for anyone who wanted to play the level, a number of bats equal to the number of players who wanted to play that level would travel to where the players are and announce to whatever cat is drawing their game the entirety of the level design, and then the cat would draw that exact level while paying exact attention to the “button inputs” on their bamboo stick joycons. To call that a hard job was an understatement. Despite still being frustrated at not being able to beat Culmina Crater, the dude was working on a Super Mario 3D World level that's more difficult than 1-1 with a twist, and then uploaded it. Another dude (probably his cousin) was also playing Mario Maker 2 on his Switch, playing that same level the other dude just uploaded.

Meanwhile kids were now watching Josh Feuerstein's videos, and that means cookies were being collected on them, and since cookies were being collected on them, word on the street is that a snitch who refused to reveal him or herself called the FTC.

Come January 6th, all the cats had to keep an internal registry of which videos would be marked as “for kids” and whenever someone somewhere would want to view a video that is marked “for kids” then the cats had to draw and voice act the entire video as normal but restrict certain features of said videos, whether the video was actually kid-friendly or not. The cats had no say in the matter. They just somehow “knew.” They were essentially a stone-age machine-learning algorithm for a stone-age internet.

The Magistrate, his wife, Ba-Do, and anyone else who had a YouTube channel got an e-mail about COPPA and making your videos COPPA compliant. All the cats mobilized to write a number of copies of that e-mail equal to the number of people in the world who would check such an e-mail and handed them over to the bats who would then send the e-mails over to all the people who would be checking their G-mail at that time.

Ba-Do thought of another awesomely sick burn to post, except it was too late. She tried to comment, except she couldn't because where there normally would be comments was text that read “comments have been turned off.” The “save to” button had also been greyed out.

“Damn, I was ready to come at him with the sickest burn ever! Those bots are even dumber than the guy in that video for flagging it as being made for kids.”

Some things that were marked for kids included but were not limited to clips from South Park, Family Guy, Drawn Together, the Nutshack, Made in Abyss, Happy Tree Friends, one of Donald Trump's speeches, a video of the Tiananmen Square massacre, and Ren and Stimpy Adult Party Cartoon.

“Sorry,” Sagwa meowed. “I don't like this new YouTube update anymore than you all do but I have to go along with it. We are the bots and there's not a thing we can do about it. Just cogs in some sort of giant machine.” She had to wait until everyone was done watching videos so that there wouldn't be any audio glitching.

The Magistrate stormed into the drawing room.

“I uploaded a video of our family reunion but IT WAS MARKED FOR KIDS! RRRAAAWWGH!” He flipped over a table and took out his frustration on a vegetable tray. “It just doesn't have nearly the reach it would have if this was before that stupid COPPA update, and I was counting on earning revenue from that to get by but since there's no targeted ads, then bye bye revenue! Unless...” The Magistrate rubbed his hands together evilly. “Yeah, I think I'll film a live-action skit featuring sex, drug abuse, suicide, terrorism, profanity, graphic violence, racial and LGBT-phobic slurs, political satire, and middle school, and see if that gets marked for kids.” I will not go into any specific details about this skit because if I did then I'd have to become a brain bleach dealer.

He recorded and edited this skit and then uploaded it onto YouTube, and lo and behold, it still got marked “for kids.”

“Buddha damn it!” Magistrate slammed his fist down on the table (he set it right-side up first just so he could do that, and then flipped over the table again). “If I keep getting demonetized then I won't be able to afford much more of the type of fish I use to pay and spoil the cats.”

Just then a sun appeared over his head (instead of a light bulb, since those probably hadn't been invented yet). He decided to open a Patreon. Bats would fly around and whenever there was someone anywhere who would donate money to his patreon, they would then fly back over to the Magistrate's “computer”, whisper the amount to one of the cats, and the cat would write that amount. He would also fly around to his “bank” or everywhere where the amount of money he has is visible (if any) and cats there would write that down, and update it every time someone donated, whether it be one-time or monthly. Ever since the tech revolution took off each consecutive summer people were getting bit by mosquitoes less and less because the bats were paid so lavishly with mosquito meals. This was also the same kind of procedure whenever anyone got monetized thru Google Adsense. Don't worry, I'm confused about how all this works too.

He filmed himself talking about how he's fallen on hard times due to the COPPA update and also about his newly-opened Patreon and about how the cats are a little hesitant to go back to eating generic fish after being used to the better fish. Somehow that video wasn't marked “for kids” since people could comment on it. After several donations he decided to get on Amazon and buy more "better fish" and mosquitoes, since the cats and bats were hungry right about now. Just for the fun of it he also bought a Switch and The World Ends With You Final Remix.

Instead of delivery drones there were of course delivery bats, no matter how heavy a given item was or how far a distance it was to their house.

Meanwhile Ba-Do was still deep in the Josh Feuerstein rabbit hole. Some of his videos were somehow marked “for kids” which meant that spectacular burn she thought of couldn't be commented, so it was now forever festering inside her brain, waiting to burst out somehow, some way.

“I am happy that YouTube has decided to think of the children. Good job. Kids will no longer have data collected on them. Only thing I hate now is that my videos don't have nearly the reach they used to, so you followers all are gonna have to become copies of me and do shot-for-shot remakes of all my videos. If you all do that then chances are the message will multiply. God bless.” A deafening knock pounded on the door, then a scrawny little kid forced his way through by way of battering ram. He was carrying a slingshot.

“Whoever made that really hard Super Mario Maker 2 level that I can't beat, I will shoot your eye out! I am frustrated with it beyond belief and I probably died at least 700 times.”

“That would be my ex-boyfriend Chad, who isn't here right now but I would be okay with you finding him and shooting his eye out,” Person 2 lied. Well, it wasn't a total lie. She lied about it being Chad but she was truthful about being fine with him having his eye shot out.

“Alright!” Just like that the kid with the slingshot fled.

Meanwhile the Magistrate's Patreon wasn't doing so hot anymore. He was now making about as much as he was with YouTube post-COPPA update. Desperate times called for desperate measures.

Sagwa wanted to cheat the system by drawing versions of “for kids” video watch pages that are not made for kids, or even write a more ideal amount of money in his Adsense and started on that, but then a pang of intense conviction clouded her mind. _I should not be doing this. But I want to._ Her ink-tipped tail wanted to cheat the system but her mind wouldn't let her. _It seems like it should be this easy but I've just been doing what comes naturally all this time. Never really thought about what would happen if I did purely my own thing until now._ After a fierce battle with herself her tail overcame her mind and made the necessary corrections to make the Magistrate about 90% richer. Sagwa felt like a dirty hacker who broke the rules (such a thing had never happened before in all the years the internet existed) but she assured herself that she had the best of intentions.

“Whoa, it's a miracle!” The Magistrate cheered. “Just as my Patreon is dying out my YouTube revenue is back up and not only that but also steadily climbing.” Sagwa blushed in embarrassment.

“You don't have to worry about COPPA again!” Sagwa meowed excitedly. “Every time I had to mark a video for kids that I knew wasn't for kids, a little part of me died inside until I could take it no more. I single-handedly edited all the papers of video watch pages to still have all the features they had before, even if it meant the potential for fortune cookies to be collected on kids. While I hated the feeling of having cheated the system and diluting the whole intent of it, what I hate more than that is being a helpless cog in a messy system that I know I am smarter than. Even if it means never being allowed to eat fish again. So I quit. Parents need to be parents, not let their kids be babysat by rectangular pieces of parchment watching Buddha knows what.”

“Guess this means we'll have to replace you with an actual bot then,” the Magistrate lamented. “It's a shame cuz you were one of our best workers. Maybe we'll let the sleeve dogs try their hand-I mean tails at it. I dunno. I don't think they'd be very good at it.”

Sagwa didn't care about being replaced. She put on a scuba mask, jumped in the ocean, and decided to start a new life under the sea. If leaving helped start a domino effect that would lead to the destruction of the internet as we know it, then so be it.

Meanwhile on land:

“It was I who pushed YouTube to do this whole COPPA update,” Chad (OC from the previous fic) admitted. “I don't care about 'thinking of the children.' I knew you had your own YouTube channel and I wanted to ruin your livelihood because you wouldn't accept my apology for making fat jokes at your expense, and also I'm still bitter about Person 2 breaking up with me. This means WAR!” Also, Ba-Do finally got to type out her sick burn, which was literally just a copy and paste of the entire Bible, without any added context.


End file.
